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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet dish made with boiled rice, milk, egg, sugar, and raisins, cooked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Add the cold boiled rice, milk, sugar, and raisins to the egg and mix well.

Cook

  1. Place the mixture in a small vessel and surround it with boiling water.

  2. Boil for five minutes on the stove without lifting the cover.

  3. Transfer to a Caloric cooker and cook for one hour or longer.

Serve

  1. Serve with hard sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set into a custard-like texture as it cooks.
Cold boiled rice
Forms the body of the pudding, absorbing the milk and egg as it cooks.
Milk
Provides liquid and richness, softening the rice and forming a creamy base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning and flavour during cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking with the cover on and water surrounding the vessel. Gentle, indirect heat from the surrounding boiling water lets the egg set slowly and smoothly. Lifting the cover releases heat and steam, which can cause uneven setting and a curdled or dry texture.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, rice, milk, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, rice, milk, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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